Winter Winds
by wedismantledthestars
Summary: A place to put all my Arya/Gendry drabbles.
1. Chapter 1

She is cold.

She is always cold, but since returning to Winterfell, to a home that is broken like her, it is as if the chill has found a permanent resting place inside the hollows of her soul. Her fingers are numb and painfully stiff as they handle the familiar weight of a blade, her pale skin wrapped thin and tight around the brittle shifting of her bones. Her breath freezes jaggedly in her lungs, cutting like glass into the old, deadened tune her heart beats against her chest in constant defiance of a god who had once consumed her. She is alone and it turns the tears she _will not _shed to ice.

She finds him amid the flames he bends so easily to his will and drags him to her bed. In answer to her questing mouth, he drives the winter away with sweeping strokes and rough, familiar touches. He is a blinding heat that scorches her skin and warms her limbs; bringing her roaring back to a life she can accept, a version of herself she remembers. And then he holds her close, stroking the marred skin of her back beneath the furs they have burrowed under, kissing her hair with a tenderness she craves but does not want and in this simmering aftermath, her tears seep into his chest. She tells herself, with eyes squeezed shut, that this is not love.

When she wakes, he is gone and she is cold again.


	2. Chapter 2

_A/N: done for a one-sentence word prompt challenge on tumblr. Hope you like it._

**AU**  
Arya breaks his concentration by painting her name into his arm with black grease; he tries to get angry and snap at her to leave so he can get some work done, but he likes the attention only she finds the time to rain on him, likes the way she slouches on the hood of a beat-up car in the garage, asking questions and sneaking cigarettes from his back pocket whenever he turns away - she's bright-eyed and smart-mouthed and a good five years his junior, but something in him can't bear to tell her no.

**Angst**  
She scours the seven kingdoms in search of him - from the brittle cold of the Wall to the vast heat of Dorne - before she will finally accept that he is well and truly gone; glancing out of the corner of her eye for his name on a tombstone or words from a common friend (and in her deepest fantasies, she will turn around and he will be swinging away in the smithy with his hammer), but she uncovers nothing except the confused retellings of a bloody battle and is brutally reminded that bastard boys aren't given honors when they die and few can spare the time to mourn them during a war.

**Fluff**  
She always wakes before him and he has grown used to finding her already dressed and gazing critically at the mirror - the only time she cares to look at her reflection - and he thinks that she is somehow disappointed with what she finds there; he rubs the sleep from his eyes as he rises and wraps an arm around her waist, rearranging them both so he can slide comfortably behind her and kiss her temple, reaching for the hairbrush and sweeping it through her long dark tresses until her eyes drift shut in contentment, a small smile tugging at her lips.

**Friendship**  
He is always up early, rising before the sun to heat the forge and work on projects both large and small, beating out shining steel to restock the armory and crafting new locks and door hinges with equal attention to detail; she is up at a dreadful hour as well, drilling in the training yard until her loose hair sticks to her skin and her breathing escapes in ragged gasps, but when she is done nicks food from the kitchens and steals into the forge to share her plunder and for those few moments, as the rest of Winterfell finally begins to stir, it is the two of them as they were years ago, sharing a bite and a jape in a quiet meant just for them.

**Hurt/Comfort**  
He knows the moment he enters that he does not belong in the crypts of Winterfell and it is only the promise that she is there that compels him to descend the stair and slink past rows of kings and lords long dead who gaze at him with deep-set eyes and stony faces; she is kneeling in a spot where the stone is not so weathered and the swords that defend the dead are still shining steel, gazing at a solemn-faced man he vaguely remembers and a king barely out of boyhood that reminds him of Rickon, a crown perched atop his curly head and for the first time since he met Arya all those tumultuous years ago, she is crying freely and all he can offer her in comfort is a touch on her shoulder and a warm squeeze of his hand in hers.

**Romance**  
"I love you," he whispers when no one else watches, curling a lock of hair around one callused finger before he pushes it behind her ear again; blushes prettily, momentarily flustered before she rolls her eyes and calls him stupid and he can't help the smile that stretches idiotically across his face because even if she can't say it, even if she'll _never_ say it, he understands and it's more than enough.

**Smut**  
Their first tussle in the bedroom is as aggressive and bruising as if it had been on the battlefield; her teeth bite at his lips until they taste coppery, his mouth burning against the chill of her skin with a fire that is all-consuming and she has never felt so _hungry_ before, fierce as she claims him until her muscles ache and he pants below her, sobbing in the face of his own appetites, twisting and keening with her nails digging into the sinewy muscle of his shoulder and tugging at his shock of coal black hair as he laps at her with unquenchable thirst.


End file.
